


Wake My Spirit Cold

by sxldato



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Blind Sam Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Psychic Sam Winchester, Vessel Dean Winchester, im so glad that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 02:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14416155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: End!verse with a twist: Dean said yes. Sam is the surviving brother.





	Wake My Spirit Cold

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Dystopian AU square-- i knew i wanted to do something with end!verse, but i wanted to do something unique and i really like how this turned out tbh

“Your hair’s gotten long,” was the first thing Dean said after five years of possession.

There were dozens of questions buzzing around his head, the biggest of which being that he had no idea how he was still alive after housing an archangel for half a decade. Another was where he was, and why he was there, and what the world looked like now that Michael had wiped the proverbial floor with Lucifer. 

Despite those concerns and how they loomed over him, all he could concentrate on was the man sitting next to his bed. The long brown hair, the slope of his nose, the birthmarks on his face. Everything inside him told him it was Sam, but he couldn’t believe it. 

Sam startled in his seat next to Dean’s bed. “Thank God,” he breathed. “You’re awake.”

Dean focused on Sam’s eyes; they were pale and vacant. “Sammy, are you blind?”

Sam hadn’t been called by that name in a really long time, and it tugged on something deep inside him that he thought he’d buried far enough to never reach again. But there was a flood coming, and it threatened to pull the feeling from its grave.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “I know it’s you, it’s… it’s really you.”

“Expecting someone else, huh?”

“Well, yeah,” Sam replied with a short, helpless kind of laugh. He didn’t bother pretending he wasn’t crying. “What happened?” 

“The end,” Dean said. “I– he killed the devil. It’s over.” Dean glanced around from the makeshift hospital bed, taking in the dingy room. Dull grey light filtered in from the windows. Light rain pattered on the roof. It felt peaceful. Not exactly paradise on earth, but definitely better than his previous arrangement. 

“What happened to you?” Dean asked. 

“My abilities got stronger and my sight got worse,” Sam said. “The longer the apocalypse went on, the more I could see. And… the less I could see.” 

“Your psychic thing,” Dean guessed. “Is that how you found me?” 

“I could feel you. I dunno, I… I just knew.” 

Sam’s “psychic thing” made the entire camp a tad uncomfortable, but it was a vital source of defense. Sam’s visions helped develop better strategy, kept them a couple steps ahead of the enemy. And when the enemy was everywhere around them, having a psychic as a leader wasn’t such a bad idea.

He’d woken a few nights before soaked to the bone in sweat, with a headache that felt like someone was trying to crack his skull open with an ice pick. Cas had done his best to quiet Sam down, and the two of them set out in the middle of the night with Sam as their compass.

“You were so vivid and clear,” Sam said. “And that’s never happened before. I’ve had visions of Michael, and Lucifer, but this was different.”

“You got nerve, you know,” Dean said, “coming down to get me, just you and Cas.” 

Dean’s body had been left in the snow, frostbitten and broken with no trace of Michael to be found. Sam had crumpled, thinking Dean to be dead. Cas put Sam’s fingers to Dean’s throat to show him the weak, thready pulse. By the grace of God– or whoever was left up there– they got Dean home safely.

“Should I not have done it?”

“No, I– I mean you’re brave. Stupid brave.” Dean stared at their intertwined hands, tears budded in the corners of his eyes. “I shouldn’t have left you, Sammy. I’m sorry.”

Dean wept quietly and Sam did his best to comfort him, but it was hard when Dean was absolutely right. Dean shouldn’t have left, and he shouldn’t have said yes, and he would have to live with those choices for the rest of his life. Sam didn’t envy that one bit, and he didn’t have a clue how to ease that guilt.

“I can’t… I can’t begin to understand how you found it in yourself to save me.”

“It was the easiest choice I’ve made in five years,” Sam said. “And you’d do it for me. I know you would.”

Sam didn’t know that there was a world that never came to be, one where he said yes and Dean hunted him down with no mercy. Sam didn’t know that Lucifer used his body to break Dean’s neck underneath the sole of an Oxford shoe.


End file.
